Her order required few trappings for their faith, for all things not of the heavens were tainted. Still, various of their ancestors had preserved some meagre objects of Azyrite origin, and these holy relics had been arranged around the shrine and surrounded by candles set on rude earthenware saucers. There was little other light in the warehouse’s interior, for more black velvet had been nailed up over windows and skylights; no sight or sound of their worship could be permitted to escape to alert the authorities of their presence.

The drapes did not stop the rainwater from finding its way in through the cracked ceiling or shattered windows. It sluiced down the walls and pattered steadily from on high to dampen the congregation gathered below and collect in rippling pools underfoot. Krysthenna frowned as she saw parents usher their children away from the acidic waters.

‘Faith is protection enough,’ she reminded her flock as she moved between them, heading for the low wooden platform to their fore. ‘Recall, Chosen, that all here is tainted. All is impure, even our mortal forms. There is no safety but the illusion of safety or the reality of faith. To shy from Sigmar’s challenge is to render yourself deaf to his warning. Only in Azyr will we find sanctuary, and only upon the appointed hour.’

Krysthenna stepped up onto her crude stage and turned to her Chosen. She was a small woman, slight and careworn with grey-brown hair scraped back in a severe bun and features that she would humbly describe as singularly unremarkable. Yet when she stood before her Chosen and the light of Sigmar flowed through her, Krysthenna felt like a giant. Her flock had told her that she underwent a visible change, seeming to become greater than her mortal self, a Lantern Bearer carrying the light of Sigmar, possessed of a saint’s voice and a hero’s piercing gaze.

She took a deep breath, smelling cloying incense mingled with rain-stink, mouldering damp and the collected body odour of more than three hundred Chosen. All tainted, she thought, and in that moment, she despised their surroundings and the corrupt flesh she and her followers were forced to wear. In the next heartbeat the light of Sigmar surged within her again, until she felt she must almost glow.

‘Chosen, welcome once more to our shrine,’ she said, spreading her arms wide, then bringing her hands together to form the sign of the Opening Gates. The Chosen repeated the gesture, young and old alike mimicking the prophesied opening of the Gates of Azyr.

‘What is this life?’ she asked, falling easily into the rote prayer of her order.

‘Corruption,’ they chorused back at her. ‘Suffering. Pain.’

‘What must we do?’ she asked them.

‘Wait,’ they replied. ‘Watch. Endure.’

‘For what do we wait, and for what do we watch?’ she asked, her voice as strident as any priestly rhetorician.